


thy windy will to bear

by TomBowline



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Captain Francis Crozier, Post-Canon Fix-It, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Trauma, when u are In Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:21:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26718955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TomBowline/pseuds/TomBowline
Summary: The first chilly day of autumn finds two retired sailors discussing things past and things yet to come.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 14
Kudos: 45





	thy windy will to bear

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Emily Dickinson's ["Besides the Autumn poets sing (131)".](https://poets.org/poem/besides-autumn-poets-sing-131)

It was the first truly chilly day of the season, the first day upon which the humid pall of London summer relinquished its hold and let a cold wind in to blow leaves off the trees and kick up grit in the streets. It was a reprieve and a threat in equal measure, carrying the sure hint of winter like a knife in a boot. 

Francis, upon rising early as he always did, had felt the chill in the air as he crept out of bed and immediately formed the assumption that James would burrow under the blankets and stay there until quite a late hour. He breakfasted alone, filled the kettle and put it on the stove for James to light and make tea when he rose, and went out to take a turn about the park for as long as he could stand in the biting chill.

When he returned, the house was empty. Tea sat cooling on the table in an ornately painted pot and cup - James had been up, then - but the place held no further sign of him. Francis was standing stymied in the dining room when he caught sight of a figure sat on the bench in the back garden. The man’s silhouette was barely visible behind the tangle of some flowering vine that had risen quite above its station, but Francis would know James’ form and bearing anywhere, even clad in such a strange ensemble as silk slippers and wool coat. Something loosened in Francis’ chest that he did not know had been pulled taut.

There was a pinched quality to James’ face that told Francis to approach him gingerly - shut the door with care, step lightly down the path, lower himself onto the bench with a careful blend of casual airs and gentleness. When he was situated, gazing not at James (he did not wish to compound his intrusion just then; he was still making his careful approach) but at the row of hip-laden rosebushes opposite the bench (they wanted tending, Francis noted - he would come out later on with shears and gloves while James was at writing or mending or drawing), he spoke in a tone that he knew was soft and hoped was offhand: “Are you going to tell me why you’ve forsaken breakfast to sit out here alone in the cold?”

James breathed out, a long and shaking sound, a tree in a strong wind. “It is a very contradictory thing, the cold, is it not?” His voice was crisp and brittle to match the clear cool air. Francis made no reply but to incline his head, _I’m listening_ ; he knew from long and storied experience that James had more to say. 

Indeed, words kept tumbling from his mouth in a sharp and sudden wave: “There’s nothing in the world like it. No winter here compares. It was so immediate, claws sinking in the minute I would come above deck, and it gripped onto one and stuck.” James made a claw of his hand, then, pulled and worried at the cuff of his coat as if he were trying to rip it. “We were in it for so long by the end that it was all I could feel - I had forgot warmth as a physical sensation.” A wild little laugh. “The smoky little cookstove you sat me down in front of at the outpost felt as hot as summer in Syria for its newness.”

Francis hummed, reaching to turn over James’ agitated hand and place his own atop it, stroking remembered paths in a way that was perhaps indulgent - he had learned in his time loving James that sometimes indulgence was perfectly necessary. “Do you remember me bathing your hands in those basins of water to hold off the frostbite?” Stroking down each of James’ fingers, massaging, grounding. Perhaps the memory would come back more clearly with such inducement; perhaps it would be more pleasant than what James dwelt on now. “First cool, then tepid, then warm, up by degrees.” He made his voice rhythmic and reliable, waves falling against the shore of James’ unease. James’ sigh was a high whistle through his nose as he let himself be thus cared for, eyes sliding shut and chin twitching into a nod. 

Francis had a chance to take in his husband’s aspect more fully now that he was no longer immediately concerned for his state. He felt the stillness of the moment by all its tiny stirrings: the hairs that the sharp breeze teased up to dance across James’ brow and cheek; the way he sat with his slippered feet tucked in under the bench, heels knocking the spindle and toes knocking the stone; the vaguely perceived shapes of the trees moving gently behind him with their leaves just beginning to turn, eager to show the grey little world of London some brightness. For all the dull sky and downcast mood that surrounded them, Francis felt the brightness of this moment acutely for its being shared between the two of them.

Eyes still closed, James picked up the conversational thread from an earlier point with rote ease. “I am always conscious when I come outside that it is not at all the same animal that we face here -” a little scoff, incredulous, almost fond, the way a sailor is fond of a rough sea that he has crossed often - “such a small teething thing compared with the force of a cold that is used to rule in its own domain and never give way to warmth. I always marvel at the dullness of the claws when I go out in an English winter. And then I am back inside in a moment for catching a chill and must be held fast until I cease shaking.” James’ voice trembled upwards toward the end of his speech, and he pressed his thin lips fast together against further traitorous sound.

“Perhaps we should consider a move to the continent,” Francis suggested, attempting to guide James’ thoughts in a sweeter direction. He knocked his shoulder gently against James’ as he continued, “Italy, or Spain. Somewhere coastal. You would not feel the cold there, or at least very seldom.”

James sighed, smiling fleetingly at the idea before his mouth twisted down again. “I don’t _mind_ being cold, truly,” he insisted. “Not intellectually. It is only— I detest—” James paused, seeming to put effort into the choosing of his next words. His eyes were open now and staring mutinously at a point somewhere within the rosebushes. “I used to be so very able. I am not accustomed to have my body do anything without leave from my mind.”

Francis nodded, turning the words over in his own mind. He knew how it ate at James not to be so hale as he once was, to be confined indoors most of the winter and unable to stand the long evenings in company that had been his bread and butter for so long. It must be difficult indeed for him to bear the uncertainty, the possibility that at any time his body might betray him, when he had built so much of his life around the adventuresome. Francis had accepted the pains and shortfalls of age with the grudging grace of one who had never been truly carefree or handsome, and even he struggled sometimes to accept the clumsiness of his frost-touched fingertips and feet, the look of his left foot with two toes missing. James was young and beautiful still, and had (if one were to credit his dinner-table orations) spent the bulk of his career performing dashing feats in foreign lands; well could Francis imagine how deeply the blows of debility and perceived diminishment of good looks must strike him.

Beyond that there was the dreadful uncertainty, the fact that neither of them truly knew what caused the shaking and the spells of exhaustion and the sudden fleeting terrors. They had learnt some of the triggers, words and situations to avoid, but were in the dark entirely as to the pathology of the thing. Francis could admit, in his own mind, that it frightened him - but in seeing James frightened as well, he would always resolve to be the embodiment of stoic comfort and reason.

“It is not just,” he agreed, “that you should be limited thus. If I could take the feeling from you I would.” He sat forward to catch James’ gaze; James let his wet eyes be tugged to Francis’ reluctantly, inevitably, like a dredging net hauled up from the sea. “It would not cure your reaction to the cold to be lodged in a warmer place, but it would remove the opportunity for it to afflict you. I believe you might be happier if you could go out more often, if you were not confined to house and carriage all winter long. I would be happier to see you thus.” He had been in jest before with his suggestion of a move, but he was beginning to be convinced of its merit. They had not planned to stay in London forever, and Italy was as good as England for living in secluded sodomite retirement - better, even. “Consider it, James. Is that something you would wish?”

James’ mouth contorted once again, not in distress now but in thought. “Perhaps,” he said slowly. “It would be...hmm. Perhaps.”

“We do not need to discuss it further now,” Francis assured him, noting the way his eyes darted nervously and his mouth opened and shut in halting fits. “We have nothing if not time.”

James nodded - closed and opened his eyes - sighed long and gustily. Squeezed Francis’ hand. “Aye,” he agreed. Then, “Sit with me here awhile, would you?”

“I had not thought to leave,” Francis said, and squeezed James’ hand in return.

For some time they sat again in silence, watching the leaves turn and flutter in the wind. Francis felt that brightness swelling from the place their hands met, cradling them both and engulfing the entire plot, making a glowing radiant spot of their rambling little back-garden that could surely be seen by any bird who happened to fly over town. _Nothing if not time._

“What would we do in Italy?” James’ voice was soft and tired when he spoke up again, but lighter than it had been. He tipped his head against Francis’ side-to-side. “Farm a citrus grove?”

The question was teasing, only perhaps half-serious; Francis met it with an earnest reply. “If you like,” he said. Then, after a pause, “Anything you like.”

James turned his forehead to press against the side of Francis’ face, tucking the sharp cold line of his nose into Francis’ cheek, mincing up to the chilly kiss that would surely be pressed there soon. “I should like that,” he replied.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're as into the idea of James and Francis tending a citrus orchard on the continent as I am, I heartily recommend Ias' [orange grove](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1032093) series.


End file.
